AUSTRALIA

General

H - Z

According to Surveillant 1.6, the author is a journalist and former private secretary to Gough Whitlam. Here, he "presents the case of Ian Francis Milner, a spy for the Soviets in Australia." Edwards, I&NS 7.2, notes that Milner came under suspicion of passing classified information to the Soviets while working in the Australian Department of External Affairs; he left the country and eventually settled in Prague. Hall adds little to the information in Robert Manne's The Petrov Affair. There are also an "extraordinary number of errors, especially in the spelling of names and biographic details of individuals mentioned in the text."

Clark comment: If Hall's knowledge of Australian intelligence is no better than the lack of knowledge exhibited in his chapter on the CIA, I would advise extreme caution in relying on this book. Constantinides suggests that "Hall ... has shown a lack of balance that inevitably colors his views and affects the way he uses facts." Nevertheless, Hall is "well-connected and in certain cases well-informed." Cain, I&NS 6.1/242-243, praises Hall's work as "the first to reveal some of the inner intelligence secrets of Australia," and notes that some of Hall's information, even though over 10 years old, remains of "interest and value."

Horner, David. The Spy Catchers: The Official History of ASIO 1949-1963. Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 2014.

West, IJI&C 28.3 (Fall 2015), says "David Horner's authoritative account" of events surrounding the Petrov defection "is absolutely compelling and completely undermines the numerous other versions of the episode." Although this official history "is borderline hagiographic," the author "knows his craft and has produced a strongly recommended and hugely impressive account of ASIO's work."

The victory of the Australian Labor Party at the polls in 1972 brought swift change to the Australian political scene. The "Murphy raids" on ASIO brought more difficulties for the ALP government than it did for Australian intelligence.

Lee, H.P. "The Australian Security Intelligence Organisation -- New Mechanisms for Accountability." International and Comparative Law Quarterly 38 (Oct. 1989): 890-905.

Marr, David. The Ivanov Trail. Melbourne: Nelson, 1984.

ASIO bugs in the home of Valeri Ivanov recorded conversations between the Soviet diplomat and a businessman and former Australian Labor Party official, David Combe. Banned from contact with the government, it took Combe some years and effort to clear himself from suspicion of being a conduit from the Labor Party to the KGB.

Pforzheimer: The author was Director, Scientific and Technical Intelligence, Joint Intelligence Organization. "This important book is unique in the recent literature in dealing with scientific and technical intelligence as an essential aspect of strategic or national intelligence."

McKnight, David. "The Moscow-Canberra Cables: How Soviet Intelligence Obtained British Secrets through the Back Door." Intelligence and National Security 13, no. 2 (Summer 1998): 159-170.

The Venona releases include over 200 decoded cables between Canberra and Moscow. The author draws three major conclusions from his analysis of the materials: (1) that communists in the Australian public service did give classified documents to the KGB; (2) that the testimony of the Petrovs "was largely accurate"; and (3) that the work of the 1954 Royal Commission on Espionage was not a politically motivated frameup of the Labor opposition.

The author argues that "this study of the relationship between ASIO and Australian governments demonstrates that political partisanship did not primarily arise from the lack of accountability and executive autonomy of the agency.... The undoubted partisan behavior of ASIO largely stemmed from close 'democratic' control by ministers who sought to take advantage of the powers and secrecy of the security agency."

According to Kruh, Cryptologia 30.4 (Oct. 2006), Neve's skills gained him "widespread respect and admiration within the closed confines of Allied codebreaking before, during, and after World War Two." Peake, Studies 52.2 (Jun. 2008) and Intelligencer 16.1 (Spring 2008), comments that "conspiracy devotees" will ignore this book, because the author shows that the critical parts of Rusbridger and Nave's Betrayal at Pearl Harbor (1991) were written without Nave's involvement. The biography will, however, be "accepted with gratitude by intelligence historians and clear-thinking readers."

Coish, Canadian Military Journal 8.2 (Summer 2007), calls this "an objective account of the life and times" of Nave. The author "has carefully ... documented some excellent examples of how Nave's cryptanalysis efforts directly or indirectly contributed to both the pre-war indicators and the many operational Allied successes in the Pacific theatre." This book "is a necessary read for the military historian, and an excellent signal intelligence for the budding intelligence student -- or the interested amateur."

Richelson, Jeffrey T., and Desmond Ball. The Ties That Bind: Intelligence Cooperation Between the UKUSA Countries. Boston & London: Allen & Unwin, 1985. The Ties That Bind: Intelligence Cooperation Between the UKUSA Countries--the United Kingdom, the United States of America, Canada, Australian and New Zealand. 2d ed. Boston: Unwin Hyman, 1990.

Clark comment: In this work, the prolific and knowledgeable Richelson teams with Ball, Australia's preeminent intelligence scholar, to lay out the development and maintenance of intelligence cooperation and coordination among the so-called UKUSA countries, particularly in the area of signals intelligence, from World War II to the late 1980s. There are brief reviews of the British, Australia, New Zealand, Canadian, and U.S. "security and intelligence" communities.

According to Surveillant 1.2, the second edition "updates the state of the UKUSA network, incorporating events since 1985 as well as new information ... regarding pre-1985 events." But, as Wark, I&NS 7.2, notes, the revisions are minimal and fail to focus on significant changes in New Zealand's status and on sweeping changes in the structure of Canadian intelligence.

Sexton refers to The Ties That Bind as an "essential source for those seeking to understand the genesis of the Anglo-American intelligence and security network fostered by the Cold War." On the other hand, Lowenthal finds the account "[m]arred by an evident hostility" to some of the activities on which the countries collaborate and an "occasional analysis by innuendo." And Gelber, I&NS 2.1, questions whether all the facts stuffed into the book are of equal importance.

Surveillant 1.1 calls Oyster a "fascinating sweep through ASIS's activity." Petersen notes that the book contains "many references to U.S. intelligence, mostly unfavorable." Harvey Barnett (who retired as Director of ASIO in 1985 and also served in ASIS for 20 years), I&NS 5.1, finds much wrong with this book, from the presentation of espionage as a "distasteful business," to the treatment of individuals, to the failure to understand ASIS' relationship within the Australian governmental structure. When their "factual evidence runs out," the authors fall into a mire of "conjecture and even conspiracy"; allegations are made "where supporting evidence is missing."

According to Peake, Studies 56.2 (Jun. 2012) and Intelligencer 19.2 (Summer-Fall 2012), this work "examines the post 9/11 reforms in the profession in Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the UK and the United States.... It is a unique contribution" to the literature.

Woodard, Garry. "Enigmatic Variations: The Development of National Intelligence Assessment in Australia." Intelligence and National Security 16, no. 2 (Summer 2001): 1-23.

In the first 25 years after World War II, "British models were more important" to the development of estimative intelligence in Australia. Since that time, "Australia has moved closer to American practice in refining the estimates machinery and in making it directly responsible to the head of government." Nevertheless, Australian experience has had "its own distinctive characteristics."